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IV. In what does the Trinitarian life of God consist?
That is the processable structure of the divine reality insofar as it is active by itself. In an active and most profound manner from the characteristics of its activity, it gives of itself its real truth and the Spirit of Truth, in the unity of the essence. Because indeed that identity is the ratification of that in which the Father consists, and in which the truth of the Son is realized. Then, it is possible to ask, given that it exists, about that which we might call the Trinitarian life of God.
While being familiar with the formula of Baptism that says “...the Father “and” the Son “and” the Holy Spirit”, we perhaps assume the “and” is copulative: God is Father “and” also Son “and” also Holy Spirit. This is absolutely incorrect. The “and” of the Trinity is not a copulative “and”. The copulation is necessary in order to avoid confusion, but what constitutes the formal structure of the Trinitarian reality of God is not the copulative characteristic of that “and”. Simply because there is a structure, an intrinsic and internal arrangement among these termini, which are only apparently copulated through the “and”.
To surmise this might be so, let us reflect on what I have mentioned numerous times with respect to the human person. Man, all of us as persons, are always the same insofar as having personhood, but are never that same because of personality1. In God we would have to say He is strictly the opposite: He is always that same, but never the same. At least He is different in three ways. Still, however, He is always that same. That “same” is always completely other. Which clearly means that the “and” does not have a mere copulative characteristic. Just the opposite. In the Trinitarian processions (and this has always been recognized by classical theology) each one of the persons, {140} each one of the his-ownnesses (in the conceptual system I have dared to propose here) is constituted by an intrinsic repectivity to the other persons. There is no Father unless there is a Son. There is no Father and Son unless spiring a Holy Spirit. There is an internal respectivity, which is not consecutive, but constitutive of the very processability of the persons, of the divine his-ownnesses as such.
Now, of course, to ask in what this Trinitarian life consists, is purely and simply to ask in what this Trinitarian respectivity consists, which in a certain way (here resides one of the other aspects of the mystery) unifies the Trinitarian life in God. This question can be answered, from my point of view, with three concepts or three characteristics.
A) In the first place, Latin theology has been quite insistent in affirming that the first characteristic of the persons is that they begin by opposing among themselves. Is this absolutely accurate? Is it not exactly the opposite, that persons begin by implicating each other; that a person cannot exist if it is not producing the other qua person? Latin theology recognized this, insisting that the persons are relative, i.e., each one is correlative to the other. Yes, but from my point of view it is more than a correlation.
Greek theology had introduced a notion, the perichóresis, the “circulation”. Now, the internal and intrinsic respectivity, which constitutes the interconnections of the Trinitarian processions, Is that a perichóresis in the Greek sense? Yes, and no. In the Greek sense, from my point of view, no. For a simple reason. Greek theology has spoken about perichóresis as a kind of circulation (said in a human way) of the essence of God from the Father to the Son, and from the Son to the Holy Spirit, and so on. {141} It is the same essence, which remains identical, but is “communicated” to the Father, to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit.
I do not say this may not be true. What I do say is that this is not the formal characteristic of the Trinitarian respectivity. Trinitarian respectivity is not a question of perichóresis of nature, but an implication of his-ownness, i.e., of the personal characteristics of the person as such. It is precisely the internal respectivity of the his-ownnesses as such. Of the Father insofar as Father, of the Son insofar as Son, and of the Holy Spirit insofar as Holy Spirit. In other words, it is a moment of his-ownness. Undeniably, there is a circulation of nature, but it exists as a consequence of this structural unity of the persons. Inasmuch as each person implicates the others we can speak of a circulation of that which the first person is, with that which the second is, and that which the third is.
The perichóresis is the circumincession, as the Latins said translating the Greeks. But they rather called it circuminsession, with which the Latins made both the concept and the term banal, because then it is not the case that a person may circulate through the others, but that one is in the other. The difference, from my point of view, is radical because it concerns the very concept of procession. From my own personal view, I think it is a processability, by virtue of which the persons implicate each other insofar as persons. God is an absolute self-giving, and gives of Himself. On the one hand, each his-ownness gives the other out of Himself; and on the other hand, the three give of themselves a unique essence.
B) In the second place, it is not just an implication among these persons, but in a certain way there is a circulation from the point of view of nature. But a special and curious circulation, what I might call the interpenetration. Then, we articulate the question; if the nature is the same, in what does it consist {142} to have this alleged circulation? It is difficult to answer this if one starts from the idea of essence. That is the reason why the perichóresis, after all, has not had any effective and fruitful place in the conceptiveness of the Trinity in Latin theology.
However, if we place ourselves under the perspective of his-ownness the question changes aspect. Of course, we have no other alternative but to apply human similarities to the Trinitarian cases. Instead of using the simile of circulation let us propose another. In the case of two people in love, we say that the one sees through the eyes of the other. This is just metaphorical. But let us assume it is not a metaphor, but a reality. That is precisely what the essential perichóresis is. In the Trinity there is an internal interpenetration by virtue of which that which the Father is, is precisely what the Son is. And the Father sees, in a certain way, through the intelligence of the Son, as the Son is what He is by seeing what the intelligence of the Father has actualized. There is a true interpenetration. And this interpenetration is not simply a circulation.
The concept of interpenetration is supremely important. Latin theology has been in the habit of starting from the idea of the divine essence as pure act. The proof for the existence of God was based on the absolutely existing essence, the essence that is pure act. That is the way St. Thomas proceeds in his Summa theologica. But if we start from the person, from the his-ownness of the Father, then the matter is different. Because then what we would have to say is not that the essence of God may not be a pure act (He could not be otherwise), but that the purity of His act, speaking in human terms, is constituted by the Trinitarian processability of His persons. We could assume that each person is a God in a certain way complete in Himself. There is no doubt. Let us take the case of the Father. Certainly the Father is a God complete in Himself, but He is such insofar {143} as Father. And insofar as Father involves the Son and the Holy Spirit. Because if His condition of Father is eliminated He is not a complete God, He is not even God.
The purity of act is mysteriously constituted by the processable Trinity in which the persons consist. God realizes Himself; He auto-realizes in pure act in and by the processable Trinity of the persons. The pure act is a characteristic that mysteriously cannot constitute the starting point of the Trinitarian theology, but rather is in a certain way (humanly speaking), the precipitate of that marvelous Trinitarian processability in which the divine his-ownness precisely consists in its three his-ownnesses. To be his-own as fontanal reality; to be his-own as actual truth; and to be his-own as identically truth and reality in the Spirit of Truth. Because it is the case that the essence is founded on the person, and not the person on the essence. The procession is formally personal. Therefore, the unity is a unity, which is in a certain way decanted in the constitution of the pure act in which the divine essence consists.
C) We have something else besides this implication and this interpenetration. There is, in the third place, something that seems to me absolutely important. Namely, that the three persons, because they have this type of structure, have a unity by virtue of which they cannot be a person unless making another proceed nor can they possess one nature if it is not communicating it to another. This nature will not be a numerical one (this would be equivalent to perforating the Trinity or admitting with Cajetan2 a fourth subsistence proper to the divine nature), but consists in the personal life of God.
The fact is that the term “life” can have two meanings. It can have the meaning of an act, which proceeds from nature, from the essence. And, in that case, obviously, in God there is only one life, and in addition identical in the three persons, precisely as {144} His own essence. But if we understand life from a personal point of view, then personal life is not formed by only one person. It is just the reverse. The fullness of the personal life of God is formed by several persons. And these several persons, personally different, constitute just one personal life, which is not numerically one, but does have an intrinsic unity of respectivity.
That is the case of the Trinity. Mysteriously, not by a numerical unity (since they are three really distinct persons qua his-ownnesses), but due to the processable characteristic in which these persons are implicated and interpenetrated in their essence, the life of God, from the personal point of view, is a “single” life which is Trinitarially personal. There is a unity in God, which is not numerical (otherwise this would be to introduce a fourth personality or perforate the three persons), but of persons, which by their difference constitute one single Trinitarian life, which is really and actually the life of God.
We are accustomed to “trichotomize” the life of God for the benefit of the Trinity of persons in which God exists. This is absolutely absurd. In God there is only one life, a purely respective unity and not numerical, as it might exist among several human persons, which in their personal differences, however, live a single type of personal life. Reversely, the personal divine life in the very Trinity is essentially lived in three different persons. In God there is “one” Trinitarian life, which has in a certain way this particular unitary structure, as a unity of respectivity. The Father is not the Son as his-ownness, nor the Son or the Father are the Holy Spirit as his-ownness, but none of the three can exist and be who He is unless making the other proceed. This is an activity, which has a unity of respectivity, and this unity of respectivity is, from my point of view, what constitutes the Trinitarian life of God.
{145} The life of God is not simply the life, which emerges as the immanent action of His own nature, but is primarily and formally a Trinitarian personal life, which is based on the very divine essence in the form of a pure act. This divine life has a modal characteristic, what is usually called eternal life. But this is an equivocal term. It suggests what He is and what He will be from the “whole of eternity”. That is the unfathomable duration of God. But there is something anterior and primary. Everything God is and does possesses an eternal mode. Eternity is the modal concept of the divine life. And if He is durationally eternal, this is the result of being modally eternal. Even in those acts ad extra, which presuppose a temporal created reality, God lives those realities not from the whole of eternity, but rather eternally. I shall return to this.
Precisely because this is the case we now have the possibility of turning our attention towards the starting point, towards the functionality of the Trinitarian persons. Now we can clearly understand that these three functions in the Trinity, taken as functions, are not added to each other. It is said that the Father has the function of creating, of being provident, of instituting sanctions, the Son of redeeming souls, the Holy Spirit of sanctifying the soul of the just, etc. All this is true, but it does not mean they are three disparate functions. Not at all. They are not disparate. Also, it does not mean they are merely juxtaposed. It is not the case that we have a creation, and in addition a redemption, and in addition a sanctification. They are not separable either, but indeed there is a certain union in these functions. This union is precisely the one that confers unity to the Trinitarian life in God.
Nevertheless, let us not forget that the unity of these functions precisely constitutes the molding of religation in religion, and in this case, in the Christian religion. Now we can readily understand that in the end the Trinitarian life of God precisely consists in the {146} unfathomable and transcendent divinity to which the constitutive religation of the being of man is anchored as such. That is the place we must start from in order not to lose ourselves in multiple metaphysical convolutions about the Trinity. They are three his-ownnesses (understanding that each proceeds from the other), which have an internal structure by virtue of which each one cannot be present without the other. Also, they are realized in a “what”, and that “what” is not realized except to be communicated or to be ratified. Precisely in this internal and primary peocessability, which constitutes the unity of respectivity of the three his-ownesses (of the three divine persons, in common language) is where the principle is found that God is pure act. No one has said that we have to start from God as pure act in order to conceive the Trinity. We could try the opposite way. With all due modesty and aware of the limitations of a human intellection, I do consider that perhaps present theology is in dire need of unburdening the Trinity from an enormous mass of metaphysical concepts.
It is necessary to view the world from this Trinity. To establish that mundology Latin theology has started from the idea that since in the divine essence there is an interpenetration of persons the divine essence is identical. The “what” is identical in the Father, in the Son, and in the Holy Spirit. And since in mundology we are not dealing with something that affects the divine essence itself, but with something that is different from God (the world proceeding from God by creation), it is assumed that creation is an attribute and a characteristic of the divine essence itself. It is also assumed that the persons are certainly implicated in creation, but only because the three of them have the same essence. Creation, formally, would be an act of the essence. Which means that in the creation qua creation the divine essence would function as if it were not Triune.
However, is it necessary to admit this? Because if we think that the identity of essences is the result of an implication {147} and of a processability of the Trinitarian life, then that identity is not a mere material identity of the essence among the three persons. It is a sameness in which each person has, so to speak, its personal contribution to constitute that sameness. With this, creation would not be the terminus of a pure essence, as if it were not Triune, but just the opposite. It would be the way the Trinitarian life of God makes the three persons function in the identity of one essence to produce something, which is not itself, but is the world.
What is this mundology? That will be the subject of the next chapter.
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1 Cf. X. Zubiri, Sentient Intelligence, Intelligence and Reality (Sentient Intelligence, Intelligence and Reality), op. cit., p. 273.
2 [Tr. note: Cardinal Thomas de Vio Cajetan (1469-1534), famous Dominican theologian]